North Texas Daily

Rance Yordy / Intern 

The Student Money Management Center and the Kristin Farmer Autism Center are teaming up to create a video that explains how educators can teach financial literacy to autistic adults.

The video will be filmed both on campus and at the autism center, and is expected to be completed near the end of this semester.

Paul Goebel, senior director of Campus Life, said he got the idea after a press release and a grant announcement made their way to his desk the same week.

“The press release was about the new autistic center and what they offer,” Goebel said. “And the grant was a second year mini grant for special funding. It just clicked.”

In the fall, the Student Money Management Center received word that they were awarded the $2,500 Mary O’Neill Grant from the Associate of Financial Counseling Education.

Eric Izuora, a graduate assistant in the Student Money Management Center, is helping create the video.

“This will be a train-the-trainer type video, but with a modern twist,” Izuora said. “We’re trying to figure out how to make the trainer care about what they’re learning.”

The Student Money Management center will provide its expertise in finance while the Kristin Farmer Autism Center will offer its knowledge on autism. The video will be uploaded onto both centers’ websites for download.

“We want to share this resource to the public,” Phoenix Ma, project coordinator of the Kristin Farmer Autism Center, said. “By putting the video online, people interested in young adults with autism or those who want to understand those with needs can watch it as well.”

The video will be broken up into three parts.

Ma hopes to find individuals with autism who are interested in being in the video.

“We consider ourselves to be a center that helps autism through lifetime,” Kevin Callahan, executive director of the Kristin Farmer Autism Center, said. “We saw this as a great opportunity to provide services to help anyone with autism succeed.”